CTRL + ALT + DEFENSE Katrina Manson: Project Maven and the Advent of Algorithmic Warfare
Mar 24, 2026
Katrina Manson, award-winning Bloomberg reporter and author investigating Project Maven. She traces the program’s rise from a secret Pentagon project to AI tools used across the military. Short, vivid stories cover the Google protests, technical hurdles in computer vision, Palantir’s role, rapid retraining during the Ukraine war, and the bureaucratic fights over building AI for war.
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Maven Started Small But Aimed For Targeting
- Project Maven began as a narrow effort to apply AI to read drone feeds but always aimed much wider toward enabling targeting and battlefield decision support.
- Katrina Manson found early leaders privately acknowledged targeting ambitions, and a version of Maven is now integrated across combatant commands and NATO.
Tattooed Screener Proved The Algorithm In Somalia
- The first usable operational breakthrough came after recruiting an experienced screener with tattoos, Justin Casado, who volunteered to test the algorithm in Somalia for free.
- His on-the-ground tweaks (changing an obscuring dot to a thin box) and trust-building let operators see value and start using the AI.
Operating System Versus Algorithm Fight Drove Direction
- Maven split between building an 'operating system' for battlefield intelligence and focusing strictly on improving algorithms, creating internal tension over priorities.
- After Google left, Colonel Cukor partnered with Palantir to deliver a deployable common picture that accelerated adoption despite imperfect AI models.
